Anredera: It's Binahong Time

Binahong, just in case you didn't know, is a South American climber, Anredera cordifolia, usually known in English as the Madeira vine.  In fact, it has been quite a long time since I grew a successful crop of it.  Bad luck, bad weather and bad health in various combinations have all conspired against the binahong harvest over the last few years.

Anredera cordifolia is a member of the Basellaceae, the same family as ulluco and bears a passing resemblance to some of the more viny types of that exasperatingly unproductive Andean tuber. It's even more closely related to Malabar spinach, Basella alba,  which is also known by the Indonesian name binahong. It seems like the two plants have become entwined in popular consciousness and the name is now applied to both species.

Twining and tangling is, in fact, binahong's main claim to fame, or should I say, infamy.  I mentioned previously the invasive potential of the Chinese yam in certain parts of the world.  Anredera cordifolia shares and in fact exceeds the yam's exuberance, spreading in a similar way by means of aerial tubercles; if conditions are right, ulluco's alter ego is exasperatingly overproductive.  The aerial tubers can form massive concretions which swing in the tree branches like wrecking balls - until the bough breaks and the baby falls, shattering and scattering its brittle pieces; these then go on to establish new plants.  In warm climates, it is  a very destructive invader, festooning and killing trees, reducing species diversity and making a thorough nuisance of itself.

And yet and yet... Like most things, Madeira vine isn't wholly bad.  Its leaves are edible raw or cooked, although a little mucilaginous.  It produces large quantities of tubers - at ground level - which are edible when cooked, with a mild taste, unlike the often earthy quality that assails the tastebuds of ulluco eaters. It differs from ulluco in another significant way: tubers seem to form very happily when days are long.  Even in our noticeably cool temperate climate, I have had surprising crops of what look a bit like miniature Jerusalem artichokes - knobbly ones -  all clustered together at the base of the plant.  The tubers share the sticky quality that yams have when they are broken or cut, with long strings of mucus hanging between the pieces.  I've heard of people eating them raw, but I'm not yet ready for the experience.  Baked, they are a lot less slimy and are perfectly acceptable, if unremarkable.

I should also mention that big plants produce creamy white flowers in long racemes, which are actually rather attractive and have a scent. In fact I saw a plant in the scented garden at Trelissick, Cornwall, still  flowering profusely in late November 2011, although, in true Madeira vine style, they were way up beyond the reach of my nose.  Others have described them as "almond-like" or "spicy".

So a hated and feared weed or a useful edible or ornamental plant - take your pick.

Before condemning the plant just yet, it's worth considering its virtues as a medicinal herb, under the guise of its alternative name of binahong: wound healing, anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, cardiovascular tonic, liver cleanser, blood pressure regulator, anti bacterial - like the vines themselves, the list goes on and on.  According to this paper it's packed full of saponins, flavonoids, polyphenols and alkaloids - no wonder it's so hard to kill.

I'm more interested to know whether its snotty demanour may have some practical applications in the kitchen. There seems to be precious little information about binahong cookery, although my original source described it as being a legitimate food plant.  Might it be possible, for instance, to use it to bind ingredients together in lieu of wheat gluten? If I can keep my plant alive until next harvest, it should be fun to explore yet another facet of binahong's slippery character.

Radix at Three - a retrospective

Looking at the calendar, I realise that Radix: The Blog has been going for an astonishing three years.  For those of you who have slogged through my prose, I expect it feels longer.

Due to work commitments over the next few months, it will be hard for me to post as often as I'd like, so I'm taking this opportunity to look back (not necessarily in anger) at the highs and lows of root crop exploration. And eat that cupcake.

Highs

• Producing some decent crops of oca seeds which I have been able to distribute to others.

• Getting said seeds to germinate, grow and produce an interesting range of new oca varieties.  I'm still waiting for that elusive day neutral one, but it can only be a matter of time.....

• The discovery of oca's ability to sow itself and produce tubers all within one growing season.  

• Managing to trick my mauka plants into flowering and producing viable seeds; getting the seeds to grow.  

• Setting up the Radix Root Crops Facebook page - I've learnt a lot from this kindly bunch of alternative root crop obsessives.

• Obtaining seeds from the most northerly growing diploid hopniss plants in the USA (read: the world) - which may or may not yield something better than the average hopniss; time will tell.

• Growing sweetpotatoes from seeds produced in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea.  OK, yields weren't great, but they grew.  

• Solving the mystery of the hybrid yacons raised from seed collected by Frank van Keirsbilck.

Lows

Losing virtually all my ocas - twice, thanks to illness and unusually cold weather. And my yacons and virtually any other frost tender roots.  Nearly dying myself didn't help much to improve my mood either.  Unlike George Michael, I wasn't required to give an emotionally charged statement to the thronging press as I left hospital.  I was quietly whisked back to Cornwall in a VW Polo.

The crushing disappointment of the underwhelming performance of yampah - previously considered contender for the carrot's crown. No longer.

Mashua - it grows well and yields abundantly here - I just can't overcome my aversion to the taste of it. Damn.

Ulluco - oh so pretty but - oh no - so temperamental.

So, I wonder what the next three years will bring?  One thing's for certain: the world of the unabashed rhizophile will continue to throw up challenges and delights, success and failure.

Cornwall's Tiny Little Oca Cook Off 2012

Belated Happy New Year.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (serious illness, cold snaps, congenital horticultural ineptitude), we haven't had the chance to eat very many ocas over the last few years.  It's clearly high time to right this appalling transgression of the natural order of things. Conservation through consumption - that's my motto.

So when I was feeling rather peckish the other day, my thoughts turned to the recently lifted oca crop; bake off programmes seem to fill the airwaves these days -  I thought I'd stage one of my own.  Reaching into my characteristically disorganised oca store, I grabbed the nearest and largest tubers available - the ones which the voles, mice, rats and other assorted rodents hadn't yet reduced to fragments. It turned out these were varieties I got from Frank van Keirsbilck over in Belgium, although some of them were raised from seed I sent him.

I gave them a quick wash and popped them into the oven.  Before that, I took these farewell pictures, which catch their comely proportions quite well.  I suspect that the long, mild autumn gave them plenty of time to bulk up.

Flesh colour varied according to variety, with the large one above being white, despite the colour of its skin; the pale yellow ones were yellow (d'oh) and  Frank's excellent variety 'Pink Dragon' (far right) also had yellow flesh, with dark red staining.





None of them were overpoweringly acidic as is sometimes the case with ocas - they all tasted very pleasant.  There were differences in texture, with the big stubby one having a slightly more floury texture than the others; the long pale ones were almost buttery in texture.  Others more competent than I are exploring the delights of oca cuisine - check out Carl's recipe for warm oca salad.

Although oca was introduced to Europe in the 19th century as a potential replacement for blight prone potatoes, I think it has its own distinctive taste and a bold, attention-grabbing appearance.  I reckon it makes very good eating and fits well into contemporary foodways here. If we can just knock a few months off the production cycle, we'll have ourselves an excellent new carbohydrate source and an eye-catching one at that.  The Radix quest for a day neutral oca continues; you can be part of it.

Kaukau v Cornwall - the Results

At about the same time as I harvested those oca seedlings, I decided to lift the kaukaus, the New Guinea sweetpotatoes, which I grew from seed this year.  As per usual, I was a bit late in doing this; sweetpotatoes don't like frost and don't grow at low temperatures - why would they? They're a warm weather plant and express their disapproval of our  conditions by producing piffling crops.

Papua New Guinea is located in the tropics, of course, but has extensive areas of sweetpotato cultivation in the cool highland regions.  The idea was that plants from high altitude areas might show some increased tolerance to the cool weather we tend to have during the months laughably referred to as summer.  Sweetpotato is well known to be a frighteningly heterozygous outcrosser; favourable combinations such as cold tolerance could theoretically pop up each time the random gene generator shuffles the deck and seeds are produced.  Over time, the plants best able to cope with cooler weather produce more seeds and this characteristic increases in frequency in their offspring.  Yes, folks, I'm taking about evolution.


Being a paid up member of the sow-it-and-see brigade, I decided to put this theory to the test.  And what of the results? Mixed - just like the genetics of the seeds themselves.

These are the Teptep roots, three of which showed some thickening; the other two didn't.  I quickly consigned those to the compost bin.

The Gwarawon brood all had beautiful red skins, or at least the ones that actually developed thickened roots did, only two in this instance.  As previously, I shoved the runners up into the compost.







As these pictures capture the awesomely paltry nature of the yield, I decided to take a few close-ups.

I think the string of sausages effect shown here is due to the cramped pot conditions prior to planting out.  That's my excuse.

The white Teptep might make a decent snack. I console myself with the knowledge that it's bigger than the average ulluco.









Some may brand me a simple-minded  apologist for the inadequacies of my kaukau plants - but I don't think so.  In their defence, I would point out that they withstood some fairly unfavourable conditions - stunted by my neglect, they were planted out late, during a period of drought in which our water supply dried up.  This did not exactly aid their establishment. Nor did the unsummery weather during the summer, when long days ought to have joined forces with higher temperatures and plentiful sunshine to get those roots swelling, but didn't.   It's remarkable that they did anything at all.

OK, so you think I'm being unduly kind to these feeble specimens?  What's clear is that it isn't beyond the wit of humble horticulturists to sow and evaluate sweetpotatoes in the privacy of their own gardens. I managed it, under distinctly suboptimal conditions. Come to think of it, suboptimal conditions are exactly what's needed to locate those exceptional individuals with the ability to shrug off the worst our weather can throw at them.
I may even have another go next year.

If you think you can do better, I hereby throw down the Radix gauntlet and challenge you to breed a better sweetpotato for British conditions - and then share it with me.

A Fistful of Ocas

Spurred from my lethargy by the signs of recent vole activity and a couple of mild frosts, I decided to lift two of the volunteer oca seedlings.  I had already received indications that there were tubers to harvest, so I wasn't surprised to discover these beauties.

While not exactly fist-filling in their dimensions, they aren't too bad considering their origins as spontaneous eruptions in the regimented realm of the rocoto bed. Who knows - maybe they would have been even bigger without competition from the chillies and the attacks of the voles.

This is the total yield from the two varieties, minus the numerous stolons and baby tubers chomped by the voles before I stepped in. Not too bad for a couple of young ragamuffins from the wrong side of town.

The Cornish Crest shows a fisherman, a tin miner and an oversized chough, which seems to have flapped in from the Lord of the Rings franchise. I'm wondering whether the miner would be willing to stretch out a hand and display what could, potentially, become another local symbol: a shiny oca tuber.  It does seem perfectly possible that oca might be established as a successful niche market crop here in the far south west, if shorter season varieties can be bred.  I've established (I think) that oca seedlings could theoretically be grown en masse outdoors and selected carefully for relevant traits; I am currently exploring the best ways of ensuring that this happens as soon as possible.  I am also proposing, somewhat immodestly, that the count(r)y's name be changed to Ocarnwall as part of a rebranding exercise culminating in a twinning ceremony with Peru.

After soaring whimsically with the choughs, gravity demands that I return forthwith to the ground and face a few facts. My days as oca's wrinkled retainer may be numbered; this Andean adventive is settling in rather well and seems quite capable of pursuing its own independent destiny with precious little input on my part. If the voles let it.

I Think, Therefore I Yam

I'm not misquoting the late, great Rene Descartes, natural philosopher and mathematician, whose phrase cogito ergo sum has been spouted ad nauseam by have-a-go intellectuals for years. Nope, that's not what I mean.  Neither am I using the word yam as an obscure verb to describe my penchant for eating in a manner famished, nor as an indication that I am spouting nonsense in an animated manner. It is true, however, that I can and will do both of these if circumstances demand it.

What I mean is that all right thinking people, gardeners and natural philosophers ought to investigate the edible potential of the Chinese yam (Dioscorea polystachya). This is a member of the great and still thoroughly extant genus Dioscorea, which inludes many other edible species.

The Chinese yam comes from temperate areas of, you guessed it, China, along with Korea and Japan.  It's also found as an introduced (read: highly invasive) plant in the USA and should not be planted in those parts where it is likely to be a problem. It's a dioecious (male and female flowers on separate plants) climber and not unattractive. It's also vigorous, as this picture taken last year at Frank van Keirsbilck's garden shows: estimated height 4 metres. The lack of a suitable pollination partner doesn't bother it one little bit. In lieu of true seeds, the Chinese yam produces large quantities of bulbils, or more correctly, tubercles, in its leaf axils. These drop off and establish new plants, hence its potential as an invasive weed.



My understanding (correct me if I'm wrong) is that the majority of plants under cultivation are male, so true seeds are rarely formed. If and when they do develop, they're probably produced in seed pods that look something like these on  D. caucasica, which I took in Ghent last September. As well as being consumed as a root crop, it is also used in Traditional Chinese Medicine for numerous complaints.

Strangely, Chinese yams have attracted the attentions of a philosopher of an altogether different ilk: Rudolf Steiner. Steiner, the founding father of Biodynamics, thought very highly of the Chinese yam, due to its unique ability, in his opinion, to store light ether in its roots. According to Steiner, this made its cultivation in Europe essential to maintain human health. He envisaged it replacing the good old spud as a staple, due to the latter's tendency to make both people and animals materialistic. I think he meant the opposite of spiritual rather than an atavistic compulsion to hang around shopping malls.  So what on earth is "light ether"?  To me, all this is not only etheric, but esoteric.  The fact that Usain Bolt, sprinter extraordinary, is supposed to attribute his speed to the Trelawny yams he grew up eating in Jamaica, just adds to the peculiar allure of this plant.  But surely the Trelawny yams aren't  D. polystachya, as some reports I've seen suggest, but D. cayensis. 

Image courtesy of Dr Markus Heyerhoff

The Germans seem to have taken Steiner at his word and are now growing the Lichtwurzel (light root) on a limited scale, particularly in the Bodensee region.  Cultivation practices look somewhat elaborate, involving greenhouses and wooden boxes.  Several companies are now marketing the roots and products derived from them.

I contacted Dr Tobias Hartkemeyer at the University of Kassel, located in the raccoon heartland of Germany, where they have been running a research and development project on the Chinese yam: Lichtyams.  I was keen to know whether they had been able to breed any new varieties. Tobias told me he had managed to get a female plant, but this had failed to thrive and he has been unable to produce any true seed so far.

The young shoots resemble those of black bryony, (Tamus communis) the only native British climber in the same family, the Dioscoreaceae. This seems to occur in every hedgerow hereabouts and has attractive glossy leaves and in the autumn, on female plants, bright red berries.  I really like black bryony, but confusing the roots of the two species is the kind of mistake best avoided. Black bryony's roots, yam-like in appearance though they may be, are powerfully irritant and likely to send the diner on a trip to the local hospital.   Luckily, perhaps, the bryony emerges many weeks earlier than the yam and is unlikely to be confused with it.  I do wish the yam showed the same early growth as the bryony, though - it might yield much better.

I'm no stranger to the Chinese yam, having grown it several times in the past, but, if I'm honest, I've hardly ever eaten it. This is probably a shame as it really is supposed to have beneficial effects on one's intellectual, cognitive and spiritual development - according to Steiner that is. It's also very tasty, something which tends to have a greater influence on my choice of food than considerations of continuing spiritual evolution. The biggest intellectual stimulus I have had from from growing it has always occurred as I attempt to figure out how to extract the long, thin, brittle roots from the soil without breaking them.  As you normally have to wait several years before they reach a harvestable size, they also provide you with ample opportunity to develop reserves of patience.


So with all this in mind, I got myself some yam bulbils - two varieties, species even, described as Dioscorea batatas and Dioscorea japonica. These names are doubtless obsolete synonyms which some obliging taxonomist will delight in pointing out to me in due course. On the left are the somewhat smaller bulbils of D. batatas, on the right those of D. japonica.

I'm not much of a party animal, but it's often possible to pick up a few plastic cups at such events; these make serviceable pots for long rooted plants, at least in the early stages of development. Judging by the appearance of what might be politely described as finger-like protuberances from the bottoms of these cups, potting on is now required. My finger is on the right, in case you're confused. The only discernible difference I can see between the two types (species?) is the greater vigour and precocious bulbil development on the D. japonica plants.


Some American polyculture enthusiasts have abandoned the shovel and are now harvesting the yam bulbils as the main food instead.   The 'yamberries' as they are calling them, seem to yield very well in their climate in New England  giving 3-4 US gallons per plant (I think that's around 12-15 litres) in Holyoke MA.  They're certainly miniscule compared to the the fist size ones produced by the air potato, D. bulbifera, but they seem to make up for this by being produced in large quantities. Lightly toasted on a skillet, or in the oven, they are apparently very good eating. A root crop that doesn't require digging - is there no end to the diverse talents of Dioscorea polystachya?

This is an intriguing plant, with delicious roots and all sorts of associated mystique, half-truths and misinformation.  Aside from the necessity of mining the roots rather than harvesting them, the main problem, in our climate at least, is their late emergence in the spring and subsequent slow maturity. If plants of different sexes can be located, it might be possible to set up a Dioscorea dating agency and breed varieties that are better adapted to our climate.  There are, apparently, numerous sorts found in China, with varying shape, size and number of roots.  So, to any Chinese yam enthusiasts who have male and female plants in their possession, Radix awaits your call.

A Profusion of Pods

The mild weather over the past few weeks has led to a bumper crop of oca pods. There are many hundreds, if not thousands of them adorning my plants at the moment.  It may be a bit optimistic to harvest them all before frost strikes, but I'm going to give it my best shot.  There's no way that bagging them individually can be achieved, so I'm just gathering those that are close to ripening and storing them as described previously; it seems to work.  I'm not the only one experiencing success either - Ian at Growing Oca reports similar success, as does David Taylor, who has been contributing to a discussion about oca seed production on the Radix Facebook Page.



Here's an oca tuber from one of last year's seedlings, looking plump and well developed.

The flip side - literally - tells another story: vole damage.  Not content with eating fully formed ones, they also enjoy severing the stolons to which the developing tubers are attached.  In addition to this outrage, they've conducted some impressive pumpkin carving on our squashes, many of which are scarred by hundreds of tiny incisor marks. Ah, the joys of wildlife gardening.

While I was collecting the pods from the volunteer seedlings, I couldn't resist tunneling beneath the surface, just like the voles.  And this is what I found - a quite impressive cluster of tubers, all things considered.  So it's possible for oca seedlings to appear spontaneously, flower, produce seeds and tuberise - all within one growing season.  I think this is what they call progress.